Morehead Writing Project News

Writers will find both advice and inspiration at the Writing Eastern Kentucky Conference planned for Saturday, Nov. 14, in Mt. Sterling. The conference will offer sessions for both writers and teachers of writing. A mix of sessions will offer practical advice about publishing as well as how to write short stories and novels plus offer a variety of sessions with hands-on writing activities and prompts.

Published novelist Mark Powell will offer “Writing the Novel” which will discuss the process of writing a novel from beginning to end and offer advice based on his own experience and training as well as provide writing exercises to help the aspiring novelist.

Powell will also offer “Trusting Your Ear” which will include techniques  for creating real sounding dialogue and for using dialogue to develop character, conflict and theme.

The coordinator of MSU’s newly formed BFA in Creative Writing Program and an associate professor of English, Chris Holbrook will present “Writing The Short Story” which will include discussion about technique in short story writing plus exercises on setting, character development, dialogue, narrative point of view, narrative language and other general points of craft.

Award-winner novelist Annie Jones will offer “Will Write For Food – a working writer can still feed your soul” which should be of special interest to writers who wonder about the realities of marrying creativity and productivity. This session will discuss the life of a working writer (of writing for hire, writing in genres, writing for the market – with information about those markets and how to do these things) and maintaining the sharpness and personal satisfaction of the creative process.

Writer and commentator Bob Sloan will present “Being a Writer: The New Rules” which will share the good news and the bad news about getting published today and how much the rules and conventional wisdom have changed.

Writer, documentary photographer, and MSU creative writing teacher Rebecca Howell will present “Using Documentary in the Writing Process” about the documentary arts including oral history, photography, video and writing. Together we will look at varied examples from this tradition, particularly those that deal with Eastern Kentucky and the rural South; discuss how image and word can be equal collaborators; and learn how to integrate documentary arts into our writing process and/or our writing classrooms in order to reinvigorate the personal and political in words.

MSU Writer-in-residence Crystal Wilkinson will offer a “Writing Workout” that includes many exercises and writing prompts for classroom teachers.

MSU Associate Professor of Creative Writing and poet George Eklund will present “Landscapes of the Psyche”. Eklund will conduct studio experiments with language apparatus.  These early writings will serve as texts toward poetic treatments of psychic states as landscapes–concrete places.  Writers will enter the process of the poem and search for their own language of place.  Poets will seek new communions between the “real” place around them and the “abstracted” places of the psyche.

Additionally, sessions focused on place will include: Home and Beyond: Kentuckians Writing About Place, Place and Identity, and Writing Place as Parable. Sessions for teachers will include: Weaving Words, Teaching Grammar, Community-based Research, and Digital Storytelling.

Advance registration is $50 on or before Nov. 2. Registration after Nov. 2 is $65. The day will conclude with a reception and the presentation of the 2009 Chaffin Award, a reading by the award winner, and a book signing by the many published authors presenting at the conference. The reception, award ceremony, and book signing are free and open to the public. The registration form and more conference details are available at http://moreheadwritingproject.org/wekycon.html The conference fee includes four hours of professional development credit for teachers.

The conference is sponsored by the Morehead Writing Project, Montgomery County Council for the Arts, and MSU Center for Regional Engagement.

Teachers looking for classroom ideas and writing time should find much to interest them at the Writing Eastern Kentucky Conference planned for Saturday, Nov. 14, in Mt. Sterling. The conference will offer sessions for both writers and teachers of writing. A mix of sessions will offer practical classroom techniques, writing exercises to inspire writers, and writing tips as well as information about publishing. Teachers can receive four hours of professional development credit for attending.

High school English teacher Audra Slocum will present “Community-Based Research Projects: Learning about Our Past, Our Present, and Looking to the Future”. The session will focus on a unit of study that centers on the students’ communities as a site of inquiry, and the students as social scientists and writers. The presentation will include samples of student work, and example handouts.

Russell Independent teacher Shane Jordan will offer a “Digital Storytelling” session which explains how to blend technology with writing to create student excitement in the writing classroom. Any piece of writing can be set to graphics, audio, video, etc. to help convey the author’s message. Learn tips and strategies that will allow you to begin a digital storytelling experience in your classroom.

Fleming County teacher George David McKee will present “Teaching Grammar Through Writer’s Workshop” and share several mini lessons on grammar, punctuation, sentence structure, and basic conventions of writing.

Award-winning children’s author Nancy Kelly Allen will offer “Weaving Words” which will include fresh, creative ideas to help students make the grade in writing personal narratives, memoirs, short story, transactive, and literary pieces.  The author discusses how she generates and develops ideas for the books she writes and teaches methods geared toward classroom use that incorporate the same techniques.  The importance of revision and editing is emphasized.  

Writer, documentary photographer, and MSU creative writing teacher Rebecca Howell will present “Using Documentary in the Writing Process” about the documentary arts including oral history, photography, video and writing. Together we will look at varied examples from this tradition, particularly those that deal with Eastern Kentucky and the rural South; discuss how image and word can be equal collaborators; and learn how to integrate documentary arts into our writing process and/or our writing classrooms in order to reinvigorate the personal and political in words.

MSU Writer-in-residence Crystal Wilkinson will offer a “Writing Workout” that includes many exercises and writing prompts for classroom teachers.

Additionally, sessions focused on writing will include: Will Write For Food, Being A Writer: The New Rules, and Writing the Short Story, and Writing the Novel. Sessions about place will include: Home and Beyond: Kentuckians Writing About Place, Landscapes of the Psyche, Place and Identity, and Writing Place as Parable.

Advance registration is $50 on or before Nov. 2. Registration after Nov. 2 is $65. The day will conclude with a reception and the presentation of the 2009 Chaffin Award, a reading by the award winner, and a book signing by the many published authors presenting at the conference. The reception, award ceremony, and book signing are free and open to the public. The registration form and more conference details are available at http://moreheadwritingproject.org/wekycon.html The conference fee includes four hours of professional development credit for teachers.

The conference is sponsored by the Morehead Writing Project, Montgomery County Council for the Arts, and MSU Center for Regional Engagement.

The Writing Eastern Kentucky Conference planned for Saturday, Nov. 14, in Mt. Sterling will focus on writing about place and offer sessions based on this theme for both writers and teachers.

MSU creative writing faculty Crystal Wilkinson, Chris Holbrook, George Eklund, and Rebecca Howell will join 2009 Chaffin Award winner Mark Powell to lead sessions at the conference for both writers and teachers of writing. In addition to the featured speakers, a number of regional authors and teachers will lead sessions. These include authors Nancy Kelly Allen, Annie Jones and Bob Sloan as well as teachers Carrie Coaplen-Anderson, Shane Jordan, George David McKee, and Audra Slocum.

MSU Writer-in-residence Crystal Wilkinson will present the session “Home and Beyond: Kentuckians Writing About Place”. Wilkinson will share passages of Kentucky writing about place; discuss the importance of place-based writing; and culminate the session with some writing exercises based on place. She recommends the text “Home and Beyond” edited by Morris Grubbs to complement the session.

Writer, documentary photographer, and MSU creative writing teacher Rebecca Howell will present “Writing Place as Parable”. Howell asks how can we learn to use imagination to approach our landscape in fresh ways; and how exactly do we ‘set the familiar [place] in unfamiliar context’? Howell’s session will explore the point where ‘home’ becomes metaphor, and through it, parable. Howell will engage in close readings, in-session writing, and workshop to discover how place, our place, can be both realized and revelatory in our work — leading us to new insight on what it means to get from here to there.

MSU Assistant Professor of Rhetoric and Composition Carrie Jo Coaplen-Anderson will present “Place and Identity”. Coaplen-Anderson will look at how place is an often taken for granted element of identity, yet in life writings such as memoirs, personal narratives, and essays, sense of self often profoundly expresses itself in relationship with home and/or place. This session will guide writers through simple prompts to begin approaching writing about self through considerations of place and/or home. This session will also provide passages and sections from work that does the same, including recommended readings. We will write and read in class during this session. Participants will leave with place based identity writing ideas/beginnings to work with.

High school English teacher Audra Slocum will present “Community-Based Research Projects: Learning about Our Past, Our Present, and Looking to the Future”. The session will focus on a unit of study that centers on the students’ communities as a site of inquiry, and the students as social scientists and writers. The presentation will include samples of student work, and example handouts.

Additionally, sessions focused on writing will include: Will Write For Food, Being A Writer: The New Rules, Writing Workout, and Using Documentary in the Writing Process. Sessions for teachers will include: Weaving Words and Digital Storytelling.

Preregister for the conference by Oct. 15 for just $40; advance register by Nov. 2 for $50; or pay $65 at the door. The day will conclude with a reception and the presentation of the 2009 Chaffin Award, a reading by the award winner, and a book signing by the many published authors presenting at the conference. The reception, award ceremony, and book signing are free and open to the public. The registration form and more conference details are available at http://moreheadwritingproject.org/wekycon.html The conference fee includes four hours of professional development credit for teachers.

The conference is sponsored by the Morehead Writing Project, Montgomery County Council for the Arts, and MSU Center for Regional Engagement.

The Morehead Writing Project and Montgomery County Council for the Arts are proud to announce that the Morehead State University creative writing faculty and 2009 Chaffin Award winner will serve as the featured speakers at the first ever Writing Eastern Kentucky Conference planned for Saturday, Nov. 14, in Mt. Sterling.

MSU creative writing faculty Crystal Wilkinson, Chris Holbrook, George Eklund, and Rebecca Howell will join 2009 Chaffin Award winner Mark Powell to lead sessions at the conference for both writers and teachers of writing. The focus of the conference, which is sponsored by the MSU Center for Regional Engagement, is on writing about place and offers sessions based on that theme for both writers and teachers. In addition to the featured speakers, a number of regional authors and teachers will lead sessions.

Preregister for the conference by Oct. 15 for just $40; advance register by Nov. 2 for $50; or pay $65 at the door. The day will conclude with a reception and the presentation of the 2009 Chaffin Award, a reading by the award winner, and a book signing by the many published authors presenting at the conference. The reception, award ceremony, and book signing are free and open to the public. The registration form and more conference details are available at http://moreheadwritingproject.org/wekycon.html The conference fee includes four hours of professional development credit for teachers.

MSU’s Writer-in-Residence, Crystal Wilkinson was the first place winner of the 2008 Denny C. Plattner Award in Poetry from Appalachian Heritage for her poem “Terrain” and is the author of Blackberries, Blackberries and Water Street. Nominated for both the Orange Prize and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, she has received recognition from The Kentucky Foundation for Women, The Kentucky Arts Council, The Mary Anderson Center for the Arts, The Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown and is a recipient of the Chaffin Award for Appalachian Literature. Her short stories, poems and essays have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. She currently teaches in the BFA in Creative Writing program at Morehead State University. She has also taught in the brief residency MFA in Writing Program at Spalding University and the MFA in Creative Writing at Indiana University–Bloomington.

The coordinator of MSU’s newly formed BFA in Creative Writing Program and an associate professor of English, Chris Holbrook recently released his second book of fiction, Upheaval, a collection of stories. Before joining MSU in 2003, Holbrook taught English at Alice Lloyd College. He earned an M.F.A. degree in fiction writing at the University of Iowa and has completed residency fellowships at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Mass., and at Yaddo in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. Holbrook has won numerous awards for his writing, including MSU’s Thomas and Lillie D. Chaffin Award for Appalachian writing for Hell and Ohio: Stories of Southern Appalachia, and three Individual Artist Al Smith Fellowships for fiction writing from the Kentucky Arts Council.

George Eklund received his M.F.A from the Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa and has taught at MSU since 1989.  His work has appeared in The American Poetry Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Cimarron Review, Crazyhorse, Epoch, The Laurel Review, The Massachusetts Review, Mid-American Review, The North American Review, Quarterly West, Sycamore Review, and Willow Springs, among other publications.  He has been awarded the Al Smith Fellowship in Poetry by the Kentucky Arts Council.

Rebecca Gayle Howell is a writer and documentary photographer.  She is the author of The Hatchet Buddha (Larkspur Press) and was the photographer for Arwen Donahue’s This is Home Now: Kentucky’s Holocaust Survivors Speak (University Press of Kentucky). Her work has been collected in Plundering Appalachia (Deep Ecology Foundation) and The Artist as Activist ( University of North Georgia Press), and she is the recipient of fellowships from the Kentucky Arts Council, The Zantker Foundation, and the Kentucky Foundation for Women.  During her tenure as the Director of The Women Writers Conference, she received the 2004 Sally Bingham Award for excellence in activism and arts benefiting Kentucky women.  Currently, she teaches for the BFA in Creative Writing at Morehead State University.

Mark Powell is an American novelist. He is the author of the novels Blood Kin and Prodigals, and has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Breadloaf Writers’ Conference. He teaches in the English Department at Stetson University in DeLand, Florida, and serves as the fiction workshop leader for the Hindman Settlement School’s Appalachian Writers Workshop and the Mountain Heritage Literary Festival at Lincoln Memorial University.

Preregister for the conference by Oct. 15 for just $40; advance register by Nov. 2 for $50; or pay $65 at the door. The day will conclude with a reception and the presentation of the 2009 Chaffin Award, a reading by the award winner, and a book signing by the many published authors presenting at the conference. The reception, award ceremony, and book signing are free and open to the public. The registration form and more conference details are available at http://moreheadwritingproject.org/wekycon.html The conference fee includes four hours of professional development credit for teachers.